The Evolution of Flex pod Technology

The current uncertain global economic scenario has resulted in business leaders of most firms handing over clear mandates to IT departments to consolidate and save energy costs, increasing the hosted application portfolios, resource sharing across departments and enhanced security. Such mandates have often resulted in Chief Information Officers (CIOs) preferring fewer data centers, consolidation of resources like servers, networking, and storage hardware used for hosting applications. IT needs to function as large service providers. Flex Pod platform has been developed by Cisco and NetApp to meet these specific requirements.

What is Flex Pod and how does it function?

Flex Pod can act as a data center platform for hosting infrastructure and business applications in a bare-metal and virtual environment. The solution has undergone vigorous validations and tests through various operating systems and hypervisors including those from VMware, Red Hat and Microsoft, managed by the Flex Pod ecosystem partner software.

Cisco Net app Flex Pod creates a platform for hosting applications, which is efficient, agile and scalable. These objectives are achieved by combining servers, storage hardware and the overall network fabric. These platforms are tested and configured by Cisco Validated Design methodology in both their virtual and native OS environments.

Cisco and Net App service teams enable the deployment of this through several design guides. The businesses are provided with Flex Pod and other additional features like a set of programmable interfaces assisting deployment automation, billing based on actual use and monitoring of various faults.

Within a short time frame of two years, Flex Pod has gained rapid popularity among its customers. Cisco and Net App has deployed the solution for more than 2400 customers across the world, resulting in around 70 public references. The platform currently has more than 900 channel partners, with the number expected to cross 1,000 in the near future.

The value-add services of Flex Pod include a cutting edge secure and multi-storage architecture which can integrate a large number of platforms. This is augmented by companies like Dell Compellent and CommVault

New Products of Flex Pod:

1. Flex Pod Select is an addition to the Flex Pod portfolio with a use-case design for dedicated data-intensive networks/workloads.

3. Flex Pod Express is a product targeted at different medium-sized enterprises and branch offices.

Flex Pod management services and its management partners have achieved a strong reputation for providing quality services. The services have been enhanced by various acquisitions and expansions. For example Cisco has acquired Cloupia; there have been various expansions of Microsoft System Center, Citrix, Cloud stack and Open stack. Such enhancements have resulted in a large scale improvement of the flexibility of Flex Pod by advancing multi-hypervisor environment management capabilities.

Cisco Net App Flex Pod is an ideal, cost efficient solution for diverse businesses and who are looking to increase the number of applications which are hosted by their IT department and targeting inter departmental data sharing.

Flex Pod is a product that is highly trustworthy. You can use it to make your networking and file sharing, computing a much easier job. Flex Pod is a product now sold worldwide and has multiple benefits which have been explained above. If you want the best services, you really do not have to look beyond Flex Pod.